Blood Trust jm-3

by Eric Van Lustbader

  He picked his head up from his paperwork. He looked neat and tidy. He was freshly shaved. It looked as if his nails had been waxed. “What do you mean?”

  “First the vial of roofies with Alli’s fingerprints is found under her bed. Pretty damning, no? But then this bloody knife. Who in their right mind would dump a murder weapon behind where they live?”

  “You forget, Naomi. She’s not in her right mind. Hasn’t been, apparently, since she was abducted.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “You’re missing the point.”

  “Which is?”

  He seemed peculiarly disinterested, she thought, or unusually distracted. Maybe that amounted to the same thing.

  “It’s as if she was set up, then given this loophole.”

  “I don’t agree.” He shook out a cigarette, then, remembering he couldn’t smoke in the office, shoved it back into the pack. “Why should she care about us finding the murder weapon if her prints aren’t on it?”

  She ran a hand distractedly through her hair. She was suddenly sick of him.

  “What have you found out about Qershi Holdings, the company that rented out the space where the Stem was transacting their business?”

  “Exactly zippo.” Naomi was aware of how flat her voice sounded. She bitterly hated failure. Whoever said that you can’t handle success until you’ve failed was full of shit. “It’s a shell corporation, doing business out of the Cayman Islands.”

  “Which local bank does it use? The Cayman banks are more helpful to us nowadays.”

  Naomi sighed. “If only. No, all I could pick up was a PO box.”

  “So,” he said, “another dead end.”

  She nodded. “For the moment, at least.”

  They burned the rest of the afternoon writing their first report for Henry Holt Carson, not an easy assignment, considering both the lack of hard information and the one bit of news sure to bring out their ad hoc employer’s ire.

  The more they worked on the draft, the more anxious Naomi became. “Let’s emphasize the increasingly cloudy picture the evidence is providing,” she said. “That’s sure to please him.” After a grunt from McKinsey, she plowed on. “And maybe we should omit the part about Alli being with Jack.”

  “What?” McKinsey’s head snapped up. “Are you nuts? That’s about the only solid news we have for him. She isn’t lost and she isn’t on her own.”

  “She’s with Jack; just what he doesn’t want. He’ll have a shit fit.”

  McKinsey brushed away her words. “Not our concern. It goes in the report. End of story.”

  Naomi brought her eyes back down to the draft. He was right—of course he was. But she couldn’t help thinking that the news would put Jack at the top of Henry Holt Carson’s enemy list. She tried to continue typing on her computer keyboard, but found that her fingers wouldn’t work. She sat brooding for a moment, aware that McKinsey was eyeing her. Then she pushed her chair back and went and got some coffee from the office machine. Its bitterness matched her mood. She said to hell with it, dumped in some half-and-half instead of two-percent milk, added three teaspoons of real sugar instead of Splenda, and knocked back half a cup before she got back to her desk. God forbid it should be hot, rather than lukewarm.

  After she sat down, she stared morosely at the text on her screen. She realized that she hated working for Carson. Hell, she hated Carson himself. He was so unlike his brother, whose sudden and shocking death still haunted her.

  McKinsey looked up suddenly. “You’re still thinking about him, aren’t you?”

  She said nothing, but could not meet his gaze.

  “You’re getting yourself into trouble, you know that.”

  Her eyes flicked up. “What the hell does that mean?”

  He leaned forward, elbow on his desk. “Naomi, your feelings for McClure are one thing, but when they start to cloud your professional judgment—”

  “Message received,” she said shortly. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”

  He kept his eyes on her for a moment, then got back to work.

  Naomi forced her fingers to start typing again. Inwardly, she was seething. What right had Pete to admonish her when he was working his own private agenda? But she could say nothing. She needed to find out what he was involved in, and why, before she confronted him.

  After a cheap, heartburn dinner, they drove over to Twilight. There was no talk between them. Naomi’s mood had continued to sour during the long, tedious day.

  At the club, they interviewed patrons until after midnight. Many of them remembered Arjeta Kraja, but no one claimed to be her friend or to know any of her friends. As to her family, no one had a clue. It looked as if Schiltz had been right about her: an illegal immigrant, and, judging by her lack of friends, not very long in the U.S., either. Just after midnight, they called it quits, and Naomi had gone home, feeling frustrated and helpless.

  After failing to sleep, she dressed, got back in her car, and drove to Cathedral Avenue. Parking across from Pete’s apartment building, she sat with her arms folded, her mind full of anger and tangled emotions.

  After what seemed like an endless time, sleepy gray light stole into the street. The facade of the massive building was sheened, as if it were weeping. Naomi stared at the entrance. The glass in the door shimmered with reflections from the occasional passing car or truck.

  Then, as she watched, there was a brief flare of light, as if from a match or a lighter, and Naomi sat up straighter in her seat. She thought she caught a glimpse of Pete standing just behind the door, smoking. Had he made her? A film of sweat broke out on her upper lip.

  A moment later, the door swung open and the young woman, led by her toy poodle, came down the steps. They walked several feet, until the poodle pulled her to the curb. She waited patiently, smoking while the dog peed in the gutter. She wore the same reflective raincoat and stiletto-heeled boots, but this morning she was without a hat. Her blond hair looked like liquid gold. Naomi frowned. There was something decidedly familiar about the face, the eyes especially, which were neither hazel nor gray, but some color she could not define. Then her heart started to beat so fast and hard she felt as if it was in her throat. The woman looked in her direction. The poodle had finished its business. She stepped off the curb and walked diagonally across the avenue, heading directly toward where Naomi sat, trapped behind the wheel of her car.

  Her strides were long, almost like a man’s, her strong thighs working like pistons. Her high-heeled boots left imprints on the wet macadam. Naomi could not help envying the perfection of her legs. Then she was on the sidewalk, abreast of Naomi’s car. Naomi engaged the automatic door locks. Leaning down, the young woman tapped with a fingernail on the window.

  “Open the door,” she mouthed. “Let me in.”

  Naomi stared at her, unmoving. A moment later, a silver-plated .25 appeared in the woman’s hand. When she tapped on the glass again it was with the muzzle of the handgun.

  Naomi calculated the time it would take to draw her gun, or start the car and peel out. The odds were stacked heavily against her. She opened the car doors and the woman slid inside. She gave a little tug on the leash and the toy poodle leaped into her lap. She had square-cut nails, like a man; she wore no jewelry of any kind.

  “Are you going to tell McKinsey?” Naomi said.

  “Why would I do that?”

  She had a voice that hinted at exotic places. Naomi suspected that English was not her native language. Up close, her eyes were an astonishing mineral color, carnelian maybe. She had the kind of wide, sensual mouth Naomi would have killed for. There was a strength about her that caused a warning bell inside Naomi to sound.

  “You two work together.”

  The woman cocked her head. “Where did you get that idea?”

  “Yesterday, you came out of Pete’s building at almost the same moment as him, at a very early hour.”

  “Well, it seems as if we’re all up early.”

  Naomi stared at her. She tr
ied to ignore the muzzle of the .25 that was pointed at her chest. “Are you claiming you and McKinsey don’t know each other?”

  “No, not at all,” the woman said. “But we don’t work together.”

  Naomi tipped her head slightly. “How did you know I was here?”

  “Peter was foolish to let himself be seen leaving Fortress.”

  “So you’ve been following me? Who are you?”

  A small smile curved the woman’s lips. “You mean you don’t recognize me?”

  “I admit you look familiar.”

  “But you don’t know from where.”

  Naomi nodded uncertainly. The answer seemed tantalizingly close. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “No.” The poodle made a small sound and the woman rubbed it behind its ears. Its tiny pink tongue came out and licked her fingers. “We haven’t.”

  “Then where—?”

  “But you have seen me before, Naomi.” The smile spread. “Where, where, where, you’re wondering? I can see it in your face.” She took a moment to slide the window down and toss her butt into the gutter. “In Moscow. Fourteen months ago. Just before the last snow of winter.”

  “Good God!” Memories shifted in Naomi’s head, gears clicked, and all at once her brain seemed to implode. She had been standing behind and just to the left of the FLOTUS in the enormous hall of the Kremlin during the reception that followed the signing of the security pact between the United States and Russia. The atmosphere had been festive, the air thick with hard, cryptic Russian. Jack had walked in with her, and later, after the POTUS was dead and the FLOTUS was in a coma, after they had returned home aboard Air Force One, demoralized and in mourning, Jack had told her … “It can’t be.”

  The woman seemed delighted. “But it is.”

  “You’re Annika Dementieva.”

  FIFTEEN

  HE STANDS in the darkness. Alli can’t see him, but she can feel him, which is much worse. He is like a nightmare given life; she has a sense that her life is over. And even though she’s smart enough to know this is precisely what he wants her to feel, she cannot help herself. The situation is beyond her control.

  As she feels him approaching, she struggles against the restraints, but she’s held fast by wrists and ankles to the metal chair bolted to the floor. She wears what she had on when he abducted her out of her bed at school—panties and a men’s T-shirt. Whatever semblance of dignity she had when he brought her here is now gone. He has seen every square inch of her body—not merely seen, but observed, as a surgeon will examine his patient, as a thing to be slit open. But this man has no intention of healing her—though that is, of course, his claim. This is early in her incarceration. Later on, she will agree with him. She will renounce her parents, her life up until this moment. She will be eager to do as he says.

  She feels the burst of frigid Moscow air as she sees the limo her father is in skid off the airport highway and slam into the electrical pole. She sees her mother gasping for air, her father white and dead, laid out on a makeshift bier inside Air Force One as they take off on their way back to D.C. She hears the frantic calls of the physicians who are trying to save her mother’s life, and in the cracks between the soft sobbing of someone crying. Jack is with her, as is Naomi. But she feels nothing. She’s withdrawn into the familiar icy shell. There are too many things she feels about her parents, conflicting currents that buffet her as if she’s a sailboat in an Atlantic storm. At every moment, she’s in danger of capsizing, and then there’s nowhere to go but down into darkness.

  She knows her parents love her, but it’s the way they love her that hurts and disappoints her. Hell-bent on micromanaging her childhood and adolescence, they have lost sight of her individuality. Instead, she has become an extension of the Edward Carson brand.

  She resigns herself to being raped; had, in fact, prepared herself for whatever forms of sexual perversions he undoubtedly harbored. The thought of what is surely coming terrifies her, but she knows she can lock at least part of her mind away, keep it safe from whatever he might do to her. Emma had taught her how to do that; Emma was a master at locking herself away.

  But she is wholly unprepared for how deeply and intimately he has invaded her life. And from the outset, he uses his knowledge to worm his way inside her brain and take up residence there.

  His heat permeates the air and she smells him as he leans over her, his rough, scaly hands covering hers, his lips in the fringe of hair over her forehead.

  “I’ve seen you walking across campus with Emma McClure,” he says. “I know you two were roommates.” He laughs softly, unpleasantly, and a sudden whiff of rotting meat comes to her, almost makes her gag. “Well, but everyone at Langley Fields knows that you two were roommates, that you were best friends. But I know something more.”

  She closes her eyes against the assault of his voice, but it pushes farther inside her. She has no defenses against what he says next.

  “I know that you and Emma were lovers. How do I know this? I’ve heard your squeals and moans of delight. I’ve heard you call her name just before it ends, I’ve heard her cursing softly when you did those things to her she liked best.”

  She doesn’t want to respond, but she can’t help herself—the first time of many during that week of darkness and disorientation. And the words are wrenched out of her throat, almost as a sob. “How? How?”

  He breathes on her again, almost as a sigh of pleasure, but it might only be satisfaction. “She was a good teacher, wasn’t she, Alli? A gentle and loving teacher, yes?”

  Alli starts to sob, hot tears sliding down her cheeks, and she thinks, Oh, my God, Emma. Emma!

  “Just as I am a gentle and loving teacher, Alli. In the coming days, I propose to show you what a lie your previous life has been, how you have been betrayed by those who profess to love you the most. Your parents don’t love you, Alli—they never did. They used you to further their ambitions, their political agenda. You’ve always hated them, you simply need to be made aware of it. They have debased you, stolen your identity, your very humanity. I will return these precious things to you. I’m the only one who can. You may not understand that now, but in time you will, I promise you. And the first step is to renounce them. This is the only way to gain back what they have taken from you. You will do this, I know you will. I have absolute confidence in you, Alli.

  “A new day has dawned. From this moment forward, your life has changed. Isn’t that what Emma told you that night she held you in her arms, one warm thigh slipped between yours, and rocked you to sleep?”

  * * *

  ALLI, SURROUNDED by the high crags of the Korab mountains, the wheeling hawks and black kites, her cheeks scrubbed by the harsh wind and grit of the increasingly steep trail, felt that week rush back at her like a tidal wave of rot. She began to retch, and almost vomited up whatever was in her stomach. But all she could expel was acid and bile. She felt abruptly dizzy and so ill she wanted nothing more than to lie down on her side with her knees drawn up to her chest. She wanted to go back in time. She wanted to take a pair of pliers and pull her destroyer’s tongue out by its roots; she wanted to press her thumbs into his eyes until they turned to bloody jelly; she wanted to willfully ignore his pitiful pleas for mercy.

  She wanted to go back to her parents seeing them as she does now, in the fullness of time. Did she ever tell them she loved them? She couldn’t remember, and this, in itself, frightened her. She missed them now, but in a way that was unfamiliar and inexplicable to her. Can you love people only after they’re gone? she asked herself. The possibility sickened her and she doubled over again on a boulder, though there was nothing left to vomit up.

  She cried now for them, for herself, for the normal childhood she desperately wanted and never had. She hated them, forgave them, and loved them all at the same time. Dizzy and confused, she labored on, out of sight of the others. She couldn’t bear anyone to see her like this, even Jack. She wished she could talk to Annika, because Annika co
uld understand how you could love and hate a parent at the same time. And if she could understand it, maybe she could explain it to her.

  So she wept for the loss of her parents, for herself, but also for Emma. Because, most of all, she wanted to change the moment Emma had asked her for help—asked Alli to come with her in the car that crashed, a crash that had taken her life. She wanted Emma back. Billy had been an experiment. It had been nice—he’d really cared for her, and he was gentle. But the relationship had only underscored how much she missed Emma.

  She wanted Emma back. My best friend, my only love.

  Then Jack was there.

  “I’m fine,” she managed to get out. “Please…”

  But his strong arm holding her close undid her, and, sobbing, she buried her face in his chest.

  “I don’t…”

  Her words were muffled; Jack felt them more than he heard them.

  “Alli.” He bent his head. “It’s all right.”

  Her tears were bitter in her mouth.

  “I don’t deserve to live.”

  * * *

  “I DIDN’T think you’d ever come back here,” Naomi said.

  Annika gave her a sharp look.

  “I saw the e-mail you sent Jack. I know you killed Senator Berns.”

  A shadow passed across Annika’s face and vanished.

  They were still in Naomi’s car. Across Cathedral Avenue, the entrance to McKinsey’s apartment building had come alive with residents on their way to work. The dampness was all but gone from the concrete and macadam.

  Annika laughed. “Someone sent an e-mail accusing me of murdering this senator—what did you say his name was?”

  “Amusing,” Naomi said, though she thought it anything but.

  “You have no proof.” Annika stroked the poodle’s fragile back. “That e-mail can’t be traced.”

  That seemed like an opening, and Naomi jumped on it. “How do you know that?”

  Annika shrugged. “Only an idiot would make herself vulnerable to an electronic trace.”